Opec's oil production is unlikely to change much in 2015 and there is no need to panic at the crude price drop, Opec's secretary general has said, adding to indications the exporter group is in no hurry to cut output.

Abdullah al-Badri said output of higher-cost oil supplies such as shale would be curbed if oil remained at around $85 a barrel, while the organisation enjoys lower costs and will see higher demand for its crude in the longer term.

The drop in the oil price to below $100, the level many Opec members had endorsed, has raised questions over whether Opec will cut supply when it meets in November. Mr Badri said Opec's output was unlikely to change much next year, adding to signs a decision to cut in November is unlikely.

"I don't think 2015 will be far away from 2014 in terms of production," Mr Badri said at the annual Oil & Money conference in London. "There is nothing wrong with the market."

Brent crude has dropped more than a quarter from above $115 per barrel in June as abundant supplies of high-quality oil such as US shale have overwhelmed demand in many markets, filling stocks worldwide.

Two mafia bosses - incompetent and corrupt - leaving the EU stage - thank's god !!!

BRUSSELS (EUObserver) - Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso said goodbye to EU leaders on Friday (24 October) after attending their final summit as presidents of the EU council and commission.  For the Belgian Van Rompuy it marks almost the end of an almost 5-year term in which he worked behind the scenes to keep the EU united as it went through its deepest-ever economic crisis and tried to find solutions from preventing it ever happening again.  He was the first ever permanent president of the European Council, meaning the poetry-writing politician got to define the parameters of the job, making it a chairman rather than presidential post and preferring to be low-key.  "Politics is a rough trade" he noted but said he had been given loyalty and respect by colleagues. "I am leaving with the feeling that I have done all that I could." He recalled the bitter negotiations on the EU's longterm budget as requiring the most political skill and, like Barroso, remembered the pride of collecting the EU's Nobel peace prize. "Not only is my mandate coming to a close but so is my political and public life which has filled a large part of my life," said Van Rompuy, who formally steps down on 30 November.  He added, in his typical style, "in my life I have never had the feeling of being irreplaceable. There was a European Council before me. There will be a European Council without me." Barroso, whose term finishes next Friday (31 October), noted that he had attended 75 EU leader summits since he became commission president ten years ago. He said that how the EU had evolved over the years made him optimistic about its future, and spoke of "great" and "very difficult" moments over the past decade.  The Portuguese politician, who was generally regarded as reactive rather than visionary president, spoke for longer at the final press conference than Van Rompuy and mentioned that he had gathered his "testimonies" which could be downloaded "for free". An earlier ceremony among leaders saw the two leaders given porcelain plates as gifts a long with a signed 'family photo' of all the leaders.  Van Rompuy's plate was inscribed with one of his Haikus (Japanese poetry form) about Europe, written in his native Dutch; Barroso a plate with his motto "Let's build Europe together".  German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a little speech on behalf of everyone. She was chosen, she said, because she was now the longest-serving EU leader.  She said Barroso worked as a lynchpin between the EU main institutions and reminded member states of the rules "whether we liked it or not" and said leaders would "miss" having Van Rompuy at the helm. While it was the two politicians' last summit, the meeting is most likely to be remembered for a row with Britain over it having to pay an extra €2bn towards the EU.  Prime Minister David Cameron, in a podium-banging press conference, said he would not pay it by the 1 December deadline.  The dispute escalated because it was initially unclear how the figures were arrived at. Barroso spent much of his final press conference as EU commission president going through the finer details of EU budget calculations for member states.

Clearly, the IMF and the World Bank have begun to realize that the system is broken. Unfortunately, no-one seems to have a clue what to do - apart from yet more QE and praying that the Banks will start lending. Have they not realized that the real problem lies in the way money is created in the system? As Positive Money have been arguing very coherently for some years, 97% of the money in the economy is currently created out of thin air when Commercial Banks make loans in the form of interest bearing debts. Even the Bank of England has now come clean on this mind boggling fact. Yes, Mr Cameron, there is a magic money tree. There's one in every Bank in the world. That's how our current money system works.

The interest payments generated by this insane debt-based money system are absolutely crippling the entire world economy. 3% of all GDP is currently being used to pay the interest payments on government debt, and in the 28 EU countries, those unjustifiable interest payments have cost taxpayers a total of over €6.2 trillion since 1996 - 54.8% of all government debt. And that is despite the fact that the banks who lend their "money" to governments don't even have the money they lend. What's even more stupid is that since the Basel regulations say that lending to AAA to AA- rating sovereigns has a risk weighting of zero - they don't even need any capital to make the loans. The result is that commercial banks can have thousands of times more assets than capital.

And 3% of GDP is just what tax payers end up paying to the banking system to cover government debt. Add in the interest payments on all the household and business debt and you can see that the entire system is currently set up to transfer the maximum amount of wealth from the people and businesses that do the work, to the people who control the money creation process - namely, commercial banks.

The overall consquence of this insanity is that there is currently about twice as much debt in the world economy as there is money. In other words, there is simply no way to pay of the debt. Osborne's austerity and more bank generated debt can only make things even worse. The system has to change. One simple option is for Central Banks to impose a modest financial transaction tax on all electronic transactions denominated in their currency - wherever they occur in the world. The revenue generated should be reinjected into the real economy as debt free money, either by simply giving the money to governments debt free, or by making direct payments to citizens in the form of an unconditional basic income.

Within a few years, this mechanism would allow the current mountain of debt to be converted progressively into debt free money that can circulate freely within the economy. Taxing financial transactions would also be a very intelligent alternative to the current totally obsolete tax system. With global financial transactions in 2013 running at at least $10 quadrillion a year, even a tax rate of less than 0.1% would easily allow taxes like VAT, Income Tax, or Corporation tax to be scrapped, providing a massive boost to the real economy. There is really no excuse for the IMF and the World Bank to do nothing.

Capitalism barely exists nowadays. Capitalism means privatised profits, and privatised losses. Not, privatised profits, and socialised losses. Eg - Where businesses take the profit during the good years, and then get bailed out by the tax payer during the bad times. Businesses are nothing more than people. The people aren';t to blame for this mess. Its the governenment meddling - low interest rates, bailing out banks, excessive debt fuelled state spending etc that have led to the mess we are in....World leadership through this crisis has been an utter failure. Especially from Germany which everyone fell supine before and begged for their help. They responded not with solidarity buy with the punishing diktat of austerity based not on economic analysis but on religious (Calvinist) ideology. (If you think that statement is off, go and read the speeches given by the German finance minister which are full of moralizing and void of economic analysis) Punish the offenders such as Spain obviously so irresponsible they actually had a surplus when the crisis hit. The West is in the powerful grip of Neoliberal ideology which is the reason for the extreme inequity and widespread economic suffering of tens of millions of people. That is what must change....The leaders of the Eurozone are mired in a political swamp of their own making and there appears to be no end in sight. Even those opposed to further EU expansion agree that to make the Eurozone work you need a fiscal union but politically that seems as far away as ever. The other option is to break up the Eurozone with individual country's choosing to leave, and at present this seems the more likely course of action of the two. In Italy the five star movement have now decided to campaign to leave the Euro, FN in France is anti-euro and in Germany the AFD is a growing political force.

Growing fears about the US economy sparked a global stock market sell-off, with shares in London, Europe and the US falling sharply following poor data from America.... As the dollar falls so the value of companies rise as they are valued in widgets, so as the dollars rises so the value of companies fall, also if you have a large deficit that can not be paid for with tax then you create perpetual bonds at zero percent interest to the value of the difference, now both the UK and US are doing this, they call it QE, but no where can I find this in this paper or its comments, is every commenter here a troll typing a from a script? I live in a world of either robots or crazy people...The QE addicted stock markets are suffering cold turkey. They expect their next fix soon. The Fed dealer will comply to keep his customers happy. Sadly they still don't realise the QE fix makes the addict sicker.  I'm looking forward to the November Gold Referendum in Switzerland when the people will vote for ensuring the Swiss franc is actually backed up by something more than a promise of more funny money.  A further nail in the coffin for this absurd charade... QE means that the Fed has lots of US bonds. This kept interest rates low. Why doesn't the Fed start selling these bonds as there is now a demand for a safe haven in US dollars? The will prevent interest rates on the bonds falling lower and get the Fed out of the real economy.
OK what is wrong with this idea?   High rates increase the debt repayments for all debtors, the largest of which is the USGovt. An entity which has, as it happens, dramatically increased the proportion of its debt that is short-term, a move designed to lower interest costs. This also exposes the US to huge rate-risk as they must roll this short-term debt frequently. They cannot risk higher rates, possibly ever.  What they would ideally like is high inflation combined with low rates, to inflate away the value of all those trillions in debt while keeping interest payments down...  My sense is that the belief that Central Bank policy can insulate investors from any and all risk is now wearing thin. Finally. After a very long wait for those of us who always knew it would. If true, this has profound implications that will quickly become apparent.  As long as traders believed that the CBs would always be willing and able to save the day in case of any market pullbacks, why not leverage up and go all-in? It's been nearly impossible to lose money in the stock/bond/property markets over the past 5 years. Many/most traders know that the CB's have been blowing a massive asset bubble over the past few years but they also believe that they're smarter than everyone else and will be able to sell before the crowd when the bubble starts to pop - so why not, as former Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince memorably put it, 'Dance as long as the music is playing'?

After Berlusconi was sidelined and the boring Enrico Letta was replaced by the sympathetic and purposeful 39-year-old Matteo Renzi as the head of government, many thought that Italy was finally on the right track. But it's not...On the contrary: The land is stuck in a recession. Its levels of sovereign debt, the number of bankruptcies and the rate of unemployment are perpetually setting new records. As a result, some Italian political leaders have long sought a multi-billion euro growth stimulus program -- a call that new European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is likely to heed. The magnitude and form of such a program, however, still needs to be determined so that it at least maintains the illusion of conforming with the Stability and Growth Pact. But without many other changes in Italy, including its grasp on reality, simply injecting money isn't likely to change much. "For 20 years," economic expert Daniel Gros told La Repubblica newspaper recently, Italy has been claiming that others need to "give it another year, then you will see our wonderful reforms." And even Mario Draghi -- the Italian president of the European Central Bank, which has been flooding the continent with cheap money, especially in crisis flashpoints like Italy -- bluntly admonished the country in August for failing to implement substantive structural reforms ...

But it's not that Italy is even lacking in money. The assets of Italian banks and insurance companies have risen by over €1.2 trillion since 2008. But manufacturing asset bases have, by contrast, fallen by €200 million. It's a grim distribution: the one sector doesn't seem to want to invest, while the other is unable.

Italians themselves face a similar situation. On average, every Italian has about €4,000 more in net assets than the average German, but wealth is even less evenly distributed in Italy than it is in Germany, weakening domestic demand: The rich have everything, the poor can't afford anything.

"DRAGHI SAYS EU BUDGET RULES ARE THERE TO BE RESPECTED" - Draghi also realises that big countries will ignore them with impugnity - just like they did the first time around. France is already in violation and knows full well that the EU and the ECB are utterly importent in the face of that.  Just as they were when Germany - yes, Germany - lead the way in breaking the rules shortly after the euro came into being. All countries remember this, espescially the ones on the receiving end of imperious Germanic lectures about "doing their homework".  Germany has made the classic mistake of doing well when others around it are doing badly, presuming this state of affairs will persist eternally and feeling it has a free hand to treat it's neighbours as it pleases. The moment German needs demand it, the Fiscal Pact will be out of the window; Anegla Merkel would be out of office within weeks if her government were to attempt the sort of austerity it has, in essence, forced upon Greece. The Netherlands were, if anything, even more hawkish than the Germans regarding "lazy Southerners" and wanted things like automatic fines. Then their own economy began to suffer the same problems and they also breached the rules - you don't hear much from them these days. Our Scottish friends may wish to ponder the huge difference in the treatment meted out to small countries as opposed to large ones in the EU. Of course, none of this should be greeted with any Satisfaction in the UK. A recession in the eurozone is bad for us too. Though thankfuly we have at least managed to dodge the madness of dropping a hand-grenade into the economy via a Scottish separation. Now, a worsening recession means there will be less taxable income for governments to fund ever growing entitlements. Add that to a huge pile of moldering away bad debts. What I see is not a solvable problem the way the world works today.

Neither Draghi or any of the bankers even bother to talk about the real problem of not enough regional income and too much government spending. Draghi’s only solution is some form of money printing. Printing money to pay bills might work over the short term. But long term, it cannot. If money printing works in the real world why not print and give every one a billion dollars, euros or yen?

The most Draghi can do is have the ECB print money to service existing bad debts made by banks and governments. But printing money to pay interest and principle on loans is not debt service. That is called money printing, debasing the currency whatever. Yes, governments want to do whatever possible to avoid bad times for its citizens. But, as someone else once said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Well to be honest, Cameron, Hollande and Merkel saw, in the violence in Ukraine, an opportunity to give Mr. Putin a good kicking - and took it (in their own, limp-wristed, spineless kind of a way). They took the opportunity knowing that it would have repercussions on their own countries' economies but, hey, it wouldn't affect them personally so why not? ... Now we have a kind of a deal going on in Ukraine, one that seems to favour the pro-Russian faction, and so European manufacturers once again have had to suffer so that their political parasites' egos could be burnished....The EU/UK lackeys of the US Empire, are like naughty children playing with matches, whilst the evil governess looks on, unconcerned. It's becoming clear that the EU has been persuaded to drink the kool-aid and nirvana awaits them on the other side. It's Kafkaesque. The premiss seems to be that a bankrupt entity sanctions a rich creditor nation (although nation is too smaller word for a country encompassing 12 times zones and 40-45% of known world resources) into submission by refusing to offer them more debt. Europe will be weakened for a generation and become, increasingly, an unimportant peninsula on the Eurasian continent.  Meanwhile, Russia-China cement, extend and strengthen their already (natural) geo-political, trade and resource provider/manufacturer complementarity. The US Empire is gambling that its mighty military machine can subdue and subjugate the BRICS (through primarily Russia/China) to stop them becoming the new geo-political and trading hub, before the rest of the world catches on to the US$ reserve currency ponzi scheme. Game for for the Empire if that happens.... In conclusion : The sanctions were completely unnecessary. The EU should not always obey the US as they do. Cameron and Hollande have even less balls than Merkel, and she does not have any. Sorry if this sounds somewhat crude. But the EU leaders are pathetic wimps and cowards.

France must reform its labour rules. The Unions must be tamed. The 35 hr week is nonsense. And employers must be allowed to hire and fire - mobility of labour is imperative. The only way economies can be rescued is by relaxing labour rules and by encouraging employers and would be employers to take on more workers - but the regulations must be permanent. If more people are in employment, social security payments will be reduced, income taxes will rise, overall production will rise and the voters will feel more content. Do not allow Unions to dictate nor politicians who buy votes by promising more entitlements. Many people will inevitably vote for freebies but politicians need to be responsible....The 35-hour limit to the working week, regardless of who you are and what you do (except of course M. Hollande, who has much more important things to do and not enough time to do them in...) stems from the stupid left-wing idea that there is a finite amount of work to go around. It was introduced as a way of supposedly reducing unemployment by sharing this work around. This naivety is shared by lefties everywhere, and explains why health, education and other needs of society must be shared out equally. Hence the leftie hostility to buying a better education or private health care. In fact work creates work (ask any successful self-employed person). Being creative, whether it be widgets, services or arty-farty things generates the demand for further widgets, services and art-farty things, and more jobs, for as many hours as people are willing to work. The French have been unbelievably stupid in failing to see this, so it is no surprise that they have shot themselves in the foot and their economy is barely breathing. Mind you, this disease is not limited to the French; the UK has a healthy dose too. The mind boggles at what this nation of ours could achieve if government and the EU was not stifling enterprise with excessive taxes, rules and regulations.

Thieves covering for thives ...

The executive board of the International Monetary Fund has expressed confidence in its managing director, Christine Lagarde, after receiving a briefing on a French corruption investigation.

In a brief statement, the 24-member board said it continued to have “confidence in the managing director’s ability to effectively carry out her duties”. Lagarde called the investigation “without basis” after answering questions before magistrates in Paris on Wednesday. She and her former chief of staff are facing questions about their role in an arbitration ruling that handed 400m euros ($531m) to the French businessman Bernard Tapie.

Tapie had sued the French bank Credit Lyonnais for its handling of the sale of his majority stake in the sportswear company Adidas in the mid-1990s. In its statement, the IMF board said, “It would not be appropriate to comment on a case that has been and is currently before the French judiciary.”

In her statement on Wednesday, Lagarde said that after three years of proceedings and dozens of hours of questioning, the court had found no evidence that she had done anything wrong and that the only remaining allegation “is that I was not sufficiently vigilant”.

She said she was returning to Washington and her work at the IMF.

Under French law, the action to put Lagarde under official investigation is equivalent to a preliminary charge, which means there is reason to suspect an infraction. Investigating judges can later decide to drop the case or issue a formal charge and send the matter to trial.

B.S. de jour from the western press .....

Leaders from the 28 Nato countries are expected to approve the plan at the alliance's summit in Wales when the Ukraine crisis tops the agenda on Friday. The Nato secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the force, drawn on rotational basis from Nato allies, could be in action at "very, very short notice".

Rasmussen described it as a mixture of regular troops and special forces that could "travel light but strike hard". It would be supported by air and naval forces as needed. He declined to say how many troops would be engaged but Nato officials said it would number around 4,000 and would be expected to deploy to any alliance member country within 48 hours.. "It is so that we are ready should something nasty happen," a senior Nato official said. Russia is likely to view the creation of the high-readiness force as an aggressive move. Nato has struggled to find a response to Russia since the Ukraine crisis began in February, beyond increased military exercises in the Baltic states. One of the biggest criticisms of Nato's response to Russian actions has been its lack of speed and flexibility. The spearhead force does not help with the immediate crisis in Ukraine, which is facing Russian incursions in the east and south of the country. But the force might have a deterrent effect if Russia was considering destabilising the Baltic states. Since the annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Russia in March, Poland and other east European and Baltic state members of Nato have demanded the alliance take a more active and high-profile role in their defence. Other allies, however, have been wary of doing anything that might endanger a 1997 agreement with Moscow under which Nato pledged not to base substantial numbers of soldiers in eastern Europe on a permanent basis. Officials said that troops would be constantly rotated, in order not to violate the 1997 agreement. However, the constant rotation will in effect mean Nato will have a permanent presence in the Baltic states. Airfields and seaports in the region could also be upgraded to permit their use by the force, Rasmussen said. Officials said the creation of the force, formally named the high-readiness joint task force, had been triggered by the Ukrainian crisis and military planners have been working on it since. "Elements of the force should be in place by Christmas," an official said.

About the European no-union...

BRUSSELS, August 31 /ITAR-TASS/. Slovakia said it might veto new EU sanctions against Russia, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said after the EU summit on Sunday.

“I believe that the sanctions will become senseless and counter-productive. Slovakia may use its right of veto,” Fico said, explaining Slovakia would use its right of veto if it decided that the new anti-Russian sanctions would undermine its economic growth.

The Slovak prime minister said there was no point in imposing new sanctions until the EU knew the results of the previously adopted penalties. In July, the European Union imposed economic sanctions against Russia over it policy in eastern Ukraine. They include a ban on conclusion of military contracts; restrictions on acquisition of some new technologies, equipment and materials for its oil sector as well as some restrictions on banking services.

Maja Kocijanic, a spokeswoman for the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said last Friday that the EU Commission was still to analyze the consequences of the EU-imposed anti-Russian sanctions.

The EU summit has given the EU Commission one week to prepare proposals on tougher sanctions against Russia, European Commission President Herman Van Rompuy told a news conference after the EU summit in Brussels. He said the further steps on sanctions would depend on the situation in Ukraine, which was getting worse every day. The EU summit noted the recent escalation of military conflict in Ukraine of which it had been informed by Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko.  The European Council voiced its concern with the Russian military presence in Ukrainian territory.

As much as I admire Germany and its impressive manufacturing industry, the almost total reliance on exports as a way to achieve growth means that Germany cannot be the engine of growth that the Eurozone needs it to be.  The economic policies of China and Germany were just as much responsible for the financial crash as those of the debtor nations who have to exist for the policies of those two countries to work. German and Chinese surpluses were never returned and spent in their domestic markets but were recycled in the debtor states so that they could continue to buy German and Chinese goods to support the export growth that these two countries are so reliant on, of course this Ponzi scheme could not continue indefinitely hence the crash. Much of Europe is still in denial about some of the causes of the financial crash so it is hardly surprising that they cannot find a cure if they misdiagnose the illness. Anglo-saxon style casino banking was a convenient scapegoat which allowed others just as culpable to get away scot free. It explains the constant attacks on the city of London while ignoring their own zombie banks which are loaded up with sovereign debt which may turn out to be worthless. How many stress tests have they conducted on banks which have turned out to be nothing but meaningless shams that convinced no one.

It is worth remembering that at the introduction of the Euro the most vocal critics were British and what they predicted then subsequently happened. There is a lot to admire about Germany but do not have all the answers...

Germany's de facto leadership of the EU has been terrible. Most especially on the economic front. Certainly Germany itself benefitted from the hard currency policy it imposed on the other eurozone countries, as the industries of those countries folded one by one and their markets were taken over by German ones. But it was a disaster for the rest of us, and ultimately even Germany will be hurt as we become more and more unable to buy its goods. The only way soft-currency countries could have continued to compete with hard-currency ones like Germany was if the latter had allowed some domestic wage inflation. But they didn't, instead asking troubled countries to impose wage deflation - which they well knew was impossible, because wages are determined by contract and cannot be lowered easily any more than pensions.

For soft-currency countries, and even medium-hard currency ones like France, the euro has been a trap. You can't leave it without creating devaluation fears which will drive interest rates into the stratosphere, and if you stay in it your industry erodes year by year until you become a third-world vassal of Germany. The teutonic refusal to restore the competitivity of its southern neighbors by increasing its own wages has been selfish and destructive.

The new German assertiveness in foreign policy matters hasn't been much better. Merkel's dominant and belligerent stance during the Crimea crisis did more harm than good and is one reason why Russia and the EU are hardly talking any more, let alone working together to defuse the Ukrainian crisis. In any case if Germany wants to continue to call the foreign policy shots for all of Europe, it might start by doing its share of defense spending instead of relying on the French/British security umbrella.

Power comes with responsibility and Germany under Merkel hasn't shown much of it.

Here’s some legal comment from Mark Stefanini, litigator at international law firm Mayer Brown“Argentina has elected to isolate itself from international capital markets rather than pay its holdout creditors. It remains to be seen whether approaches such as a new bond swap for bonds governed by Argentine law and jurisdiction will be attempted to enable Argentina to avoid the full economic consequences of this decision.“Argentina has chosen to avoid the risk of incurring further liability to restructured bondholders under the ‘Rights Upon Future Offers’ (RUFO) clause [see previous post] and to maintain its defiant resistance but in doing so, she faces economic consequences that are far more difficult to quantify. In the face of this defiance, holdouts may well redouble their efforts to obtain access to Argentine assets overseas using the additional discovery ordered by the Supreme Court on 16 June as a starting point resulting in further cases developing the sovereign immunity laws of relevant jurisdictions.”

The holdout creditors, led by NML Capital (part of Elliott Capital), have already shown an appetite for chasing Argentinian assets.  This is something that goes back to the 1970's. I sincerely recommend to anyone to read 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man' by John Perkins. The premise is simple enough. Chicago University educated 'advisors' would go from Third World country to Third World country.
During their time in each of these places; they would encourage whichever pliant, recently CIA installed, despot happened to be there at the time, to take on a load of 'debt'. Everyone involved in said deals got something out of it. The dictators got a load of cash that they knew that they personally would never have to pay back. This they could then spend on bribes, kickbacks, patronage, and vanity projects.
The US (who were basically running the IMF at the time - and still are) got a proverbial 'insurance policy'. The country in question might be under their thumb now, but what about 10, 20, even 30 years down the line? How do you prevent it from falling into the Soviet sphere of influence? That was where the debt came in.
At key points, the IMF would issue directives against certain countries, using the debt as leverage. Thus, even without a client despot in charge, the US would still be holding the key levers on these countries economies. Now fast forward to 2014 and there are a lot of changes afoot. For one, the Soviet Union is long dead, and the 'Domino Theory' is no longer valid. But what of the debt? That is where the vulture funds come in.  These were basically a disaster waiting to happen. Ruthless hedge fund managers eyed up these old Cold-War era systems of control, and saw in them a way of making incredibly large amounts of money. They would do this, not just legally, but within the internal logic of the market as well. They would buy up these old debts and using every legal and financial trick in the book; they would squeeze them for all they were worth. Most of the time, these were against poor, small countries with no real way to fight back. Argentina is another matter. It is the 8th largest country in the world. It has 42 million people and a GDP of close to $800 billion dollars (the 22nd largest). This is not some country that you bully like it was a small state in Africa. Here is a country with the means to fight back. The question is, what next? Argentina has had a particularly fractious relationship with the West and for good reason. I could mention those generals and where their support came from; but that would be too obvious. What puzzles me is the fact that the word 'China' hasn't come up yet.

Russia's ambassador to Britain, Alexander Yakovenko, said the U.S. has no real evidence. "Russia doesn't supply weapons to local de facto (separatist) authorities in eastern Ukraine...no evidence whatsoever has been presented that the Russian government has been doing this."  However, a NATO source confirmed to Reuters that they had seen arms being transported from Russia to eastern Ukraine. The information Russia is denouncing is coming from multiple sources around the world. The U.S. is even saying that artillery shelling now being directed at Ukraine is being fired by the Russian military from the other side of the border. While U.S. intelligence has not directly stated Russia is responsible for the shooting, they have been able to link Russia to the missile, and "still believed the separatists were likely to blame." Additionally, Alexander Khodakovsky, a rebel leader, stated the separatists have a BUK missile system. This missile system is likely what fired the shot that took down MH17. Alexander Borodai, the self proclaimed prime minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, denied having this system.  Anatoly Antonov, deputy defense minister, said that U.S. intelligence did not do diligent research, and instead "mostly cited social networks." In fact, had U.S. intelligence cited only social networks, they would have been able to confirm the separatists were responsible almost two hours before anyone knew the plane crashed. Before news of the MH17 crash broke, rebel leader Igor Girkin posted on social media that rebels had shot down a "military transport aircraft." Instead, it ended up being a commercial airliner. Girkin quickly removed the post. 

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – The European Parliament gave a tacit nod to Kurdish aspirations of independence on Thursday, when for the first time its motion over the Iraq conflict did not stipulate that the country must stay together. Until now resolutions passed by European Union MPs, gathered in Brussels in the wake of the crisis in Iraq, had stressed: “Iraq’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity are essential for stability and economic development in the country and the region.”Dellawar Ajgeiy, ‎‎‎the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) representative in the European Union capital expressed delight over that omission. "Until now, the European Parliament had stressed the importance of the unity of Iraq, but we feel that the reversal means they had to take account of the new realities," he said.  "We think it is very positive, because one cannot dictate to Iraqis and Kurds something that is not in their interest." The joint motion took note of the announcement by the KRG of a planned referendum for independence. The EU “appeals, however, to the parliament and the President of KRG, Massoud Barzani, to uphold an inclusive process in respect of the rights of the non-Kurdish minorities living in the province,” the motion said.
Rudaw has learnt that the United States, France, Italy, Britain, Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are among states that have assured KRG officials they would show understanding, should Kurdistan declare independence.
Various politicians in Europe have expressed their views on the issue. “The Kurds, just like all people, have the right to decide themselves about their future, according to international law,” Annika Lillemets, member of the Swedish parliament for the Green Party, told Rudaw. Earlier this week the British Ambassador to Turkey Richard Moore said the UK's stance on an independent Kurdistan is the “same as Turkey's,” and stressed the importance of Iraq’s territorial integrity. “We think that what we need is a unified Iraq. We are very clear with the KRG that we recognized the need for them to protect their security," Moore said.

British MP Nadhim Zahawi believes that, since the fall of Mosul and about a third of Iraq to jihadi-led insurgents, Kurds now occupy a new world, and “there is no going back.” “To return to greater centralization would be to fundamentally undo the gains that were so hard-won over the past decade, especially in Kurdistan,” he said. But he added that breaking up Iraq would “not deliver stability, either.” He offered a new model of federalism.
“This model would recognize the realities on the ground and better serve the interests of all parties. It’s not a new concept, and has been used to recognize diversity in several other countries. In the UK, for example, we have been debating the greater devolution of powers to Scotland,” Zahawi said.He added that during his rule Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had only made “a half-hearted attempt at decentralization. It’s now up to Iraq’s politicians to overcome their differences and construct a national platform.”  Ajgeiy, the KRG representative, confirmed that some European countries are skeptical about the prospect of an independent Kurdistan because they fear more instability. He said that fear was baseless.  "On the contrary, the KRG stands for security and stability in the region, with its good economy and energy resources.  We are close to Europe, historically, culturally and in terms of democratic values."Among his many meetings in Brussels, he has seen much sympathy from politicians who have an understanding of the Kurdish desire for secession. "But there are also many politicians who do not say loud that their countries will accept Kurdish independence, because they themselves have their own problems with breakaway regions," Ajgeiy said.  He believes several European former Soviet republics would accept an independent Kurdistan.

The Federal Security Services (FSB) is reporting today that Israel’s Ofek 10 spy satellite was “targeted and destroyed” during an over flight of the New South Wales region of Australia earlier today while it was attempting to gather “electronic signal and photographic information” from a suspected Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) aircraft surrounded at the Illawarra Regional Airport (Wollongong Aerodrome) since this past Tuesday by that nations Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad (MEOCS) after it was discovered carrying a “highly sophisticated nuclear device”.

According to this report, Israel’s Defense Ministry successfully launched their Ofek 10 next-generation satellite on 9 April to provide them with highly-targeted surveillance of specific locations, and which on Tuesday had its orbit changed to target Australia.

Specifically being targeted by the Ofek 10 satellite, this report continues, was the mysterious Swearingen Merlin 3 twin-turbo prop plane that landed there on Tuesday after having originated its mission in long know CIA territory Punta Gorda, Florida, landing at CIA-operated facilities at both Guam and the Philippines before completing its journey to New South Wales after its nearly 16,000 km (10,000 mile) flight.

This FSB report further details that this mysterious plane was under the control of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) throughout its entire journey through its mercenary offshoot identified as Snow Goose International, and which was founded last year by former Australia Air Force officer and SIS operative David Baddams as an “intelligence entity” able to perform “off the book” missions. Curiously, this report further states, SIS operative Baddams admitted to flying this mysterious plane from the US to the Philippines, but now says he has “no idea” how it got to New South Wales. The FSB further notes that according to Snow Goose International’s own records, this mysterious plane was owned by Oregonian Aeroclub LLC, a US-based company that has no record of existing, and prior to leaving the United States landed at Kirkland Air Force Base in Albuquerque New Mexico for fuel where it acquired a “highly troubling radioactive signature” detected by Russian satellites utilizing Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT). This FSB report does note that the surreptitious transferring of nuclear weapons and materials by the US and its allies by means and methods such as was done in this instance is “common” for any number of security reasons, but left unexplained are a number of critical questions, specifically why and how this plane ended up in New South Wales, and why Israel’s Ofek 10 satellite was destroyed while attempting to conduct surveillance it.

KIEV, Ukraine — Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, a pro-Western technocrat who has guided the Ukrainian government through the tumultous months since the ouster of President Viktor F. Yanukovyvch, resigned abruptly on Thursday, after the governing coalition of Parliament collapsed.

“I declare my resignation in connection with the collapse of the coalition and blocking of government initiatives,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said from the rostrum of Parliament, according to Ukrainian news services.

Earlier in the day, two major parties announced they were leaving the governing coalition, a step that would allow President Petro O. Poroshenko to dissolve Parliament and call elections for next fall.

That announcement followed weeks of negotiations between the parties, but the move was apparently not supported by Mr. Yatsenyuk’s Fatherland Party, which is led by the former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who had challenged Mr. Poroshenko for the presidency.

Under the Ukrainian Constitution, the Parliament chooses the prime minister, and members must vote to accept a resignation. It was not immediately clear if Mr. Yatsenyuk’s announcement meant he was leaving the government or if relinquishing the prime ministership was a symbolic step.

Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS Global Insight, said he believed the ECB would "sit tight for now at least". The ECB last month took its deposit rate into negative territory - effectively charging lenders for parking money with the central bank - a move which may take time to take a toll on the economy.  Nonetheless he added that continued low inflation meant that "expectations will likely persist that the ECB will ultimately have to take further action".  Within the headline inflation figure, price drops in vegetables, telecommunications and fruit offset rises in the cost of tobacco, restaurants and cafes and rents. ...Consumer prices in the eurozone rose 0.5pc in the year to June, unchanged from a month earlier, according to latest official figures.   Core inflation, which strips out the more volatile elements of energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, however edged up to 0.8pc in the year to June, from 0.7pc a month earlier.  The increase in core inflation is likely to ease fears that the bloc could enter a deflationary spiral and ease pressure on the European Central Bank to unleash further stimulus.  How about this! Inflation will likely dip by another 0.1% over July-August, cheaper food, less energy but come up again around September-October (first heating needed). This may well just allow the ECB, especially if there is no further deceleration in German growth and FRITSP flatten the tiniest bit, to avoid physical QE.
Germany will not support QE, other than with meaningless,metaphysical mumblings, but the slither of improvement and the national preponderance of Germany, well understood by JUncker 87, will allow Germany to accelerate 'more Europe' in terms of 3% budget (that France keeps delaying), a real banking union with realish stress tests, some form of not too debilitating FTT, common EZ business taxes etc. I think a short period of very, very slight improvement will cause a 'more Europe' drive and stop QE being an issue. The 'more Europe'will show us, notably in France, Italy and Portugal, how much political distrust, intolerance and national anger the euro has caused.

However, the EZ inflation figure of 0.5% is meaningless as the EZ is NOT one country.  What I want to see is the inflation rate for each EZ member state to see whether the 0.5% rate hides wide variations in inflation, as I suspect it does. What, for example, is the inflation rate for the EZ if you take Germany out of the equation?  If Germany, for example, has a lower rate of inflation than most other EZ countries, then we can conclude that Germany is becoming more competitive which would be bad news for the poorer member states trying to compete with Germany in the single market. But if other poorer EZ countries have a lower rate of inflation or even falling prices compared to Germany that too is very bad news for poorer EZ countries as that would mean falling tax revenues, falling wages and falling purchasing power in the economy and all that would combine to increase budget deficits and pressure on national banks.  What is needed from an economic point of view for the EZ is for Germany to have price inflation of 4% and everyone else to have price inflation of 2% for several years. That won't happen and therefore the gap between the richer member states led by the economic powerhouse of Germany over the poorer members will continue to get progressively bigger year after year. It is worth noting hat the gap between Germany and the poorer member states was closing before the advent of the Euro and that the Euro has permanently reversed this process. It is worth bearing in mind that German inflation rose from 0.6% to 1.0%. Across the majority of the euro-zone inflation actually fell even further. The euro-zone is still slipping towards the abyss even after Draghi's intervention last month. Draghi of course will use this "stable" situation as an excuse to once again do nothing.

 

Even offline computers can be monitored - The NSA uses radio technology to monitor offline computers, smart phones and other devices.   According to a New York Times report, the agency installed software on 10,000 computers which were shipped around the world, enabling NSA agents to locate and monitor the machines even when offline.  The NSA insists such technology – which relies on radio waves transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted into computers – is "only being deployed overseas".  The program, known as Quantum, has reportedly targeted Chinese Army, Russian military and Mexican drug cartels – among others – since its introduction in or before 2008.  The Internet isn't the only way to download information - On a more basic level, computers which aren't connected to the Internet still have any number of peripheral data ports that can be hooked up to USBs, disc drives or printers. Bradley Manning – now Chelsea Manning – transported 91,000 classified documents that became known as the Iran War logs via rewritable CDs.  Moreover, hard drives eventually break down, but remain susceptible to data harvesting. The same legal technology used by data reclamation companies to retrieve information from defunct computers can be used by thieves if old hard drives are not securely disposed of.  The Russians are already doing it - Last year Kremlin sources revealed Russia's Federal Guard Service (FSO) was spending 486,000 rubles – around £10,000 – on a number of electric typewriters.  The return to typewriters was prompted by the publication of secret documents by WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing web site, as well as Edward Snowden, the fugitive US intelligence contractor. Directives to the defense minister and the supreme commander-in-chief, Mr Putin, were already printed on paper for security reasons, a defense ministry source said at the time. Each typewriter is uniquely traceable - Some models of typewriter including the Triumph Adler are designed so that each specific unit creates a unique "handwriting" traceable to that one alone.

However... Typewriters can be spied upon  - In 1952, the FBI analyzed the ribbon of a typewriter used by CIA officer Aldrich Ames – actually a double agent for the KGB – to unearth plans for a clandestine meeting in Venezuela.  And in 1985 Soviet spies installed secret "keystroke loggers" and antennas in at least 13 typewriters in the US Embassy in Moscow to detect and transmit the typing patterns of embassy secretaries.  The same technology is used more broadly today by criminals to steal passwords and credit card details.  And of course, paper documents are still unreliable - they can be stolen or photographed, or go up in smoke in case of a fire.  There is also the matter of human error – the history of intelligence is rife with examples of spies leaving briefcases of classified documents in public places, or in the company of friendly "honey trap" agents...